Strategy for Building Inbound Links

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Link building is the single most important aspects of search engine optimization when it comes to improving your ranking, at least on Google. With the advent of the page rank algorithm several years ago the world of SEO changed completely and the sites that were scoring high in the search results (many on which where mine) were no where to be found.

So enter the modern day linking expert (a whole new profession) and his team. If you have the budget for a service link this, go for it. Link building is hard work and takes specialized knowledge to do it correctly. For the rest of us, here are 11 essential strategies for structuring and building inbound links.

1- Natural and artificial links - With all the trickery involved in link building today the algorithm to score and rank a web page has become very complex. Put yourself in the search engines shoes and you too would hate artificial and contrived methods to manipulate the results.

A natural linking structure would have various types of inbound links. The anchor text on the incoming link would vary as opposed to identical incoming link text which looks artificial and contrived. So use different key words on your inbound link request even trying to target long tail search terms for your niche.

It is also widely believed to be a mistake, when promoting a new site, to get too many links too fast. Links acquired gradually are viewed as the natural progression of the tree as indeed a natural increase is the way of things. How many is too many? Good question and a personal opinion to be sure but 50 to 100 a month would be a good target.

I say this to call it to your attention to the fact that there are a lot of instant link swaps that put your link on several thousand sites in a reciprocal fashion and an increase like this will most certainly trigger a link spam filter of some sort on the search engine. The term "link farm" comes to mind where sites page groups link to each other but lack incoming links from sources outside this group that are trusted sites.

Natural links do not tend to be reciprocal in nature. Though a certain percentage of your links will be due to reciprocity, these links should be for the purpose of adding value to your site for the visitor by way of worthwhile, quality content.

So a natural linking structure would not have a high percentage of link swaps and the existing outgoing links would point to quality pages the search engines know about and have given the trusted seal of approval. (a good page rank)

2- Smart choices in who you link to and get links from are critical in today's world. To be truthful, almost any link from any page will add something of reputation to your page popularity. With that said it is always better to get links from trusted, authoritative sites. Use the Google page rank score for a guide and you will steer clear of bad neighborhoods. The higher the page rank the better the link will be.

3- Get links from pages with topics that match or are related to yours. Only getting links from established trusted pages should be your standard. Pages with a PR=4 or better are ideal. With a lower page rank the page topic becomes much more important as the on-topic content will give your site a more significant boost. If a site has no page rank, don't link to it or request a link. This will ensure you don't get into trouble by linking to a bad neighborhood in the search engines eyes.

4- The number of links on the referring page matters. Ever see a links page with a hundred links on it? Having your link on a page like this is pointless. Any page relevancy will be divided among all the links diluting the benefit to the point of pointlessness.

The fewer links on the page the better. While it's easier said than done and not practical in every case you could have your link as the only link on the page as in the case of an article you've written with your link back to your site.

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